The board of directors of junior coal exploration and mining company Delta Mining Consolidated (DMC) in August reappointed Heine van Niekerk company CEO following a ruling by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) to overturn his dismissal for alleged intellectual property theft in 2012.

An independent investigation into his conduct also found no evidence that he had committed any misconduct.

The board of directors publicly apologised to Van Niekerk and his family for “any reputational harm they may have suffered as a consequence of the unfortunate situation”.

Van Niekerk tells Mining Weekly that he is pleased with the outcome of the investigation, and is looking forward to steering the company to develop to its full potential.

“The game plan for DMC going forward is to transform the company into an integrated energy company instead of just being a coal mining company,” he states.

DMC is currently in discussions with State-owned power utility Eskom and the City of Tshwane, in Gauteng, to supply coal to the utility’s fleet of power stations and the city’s Rooiwaai power station.

The company’s flagship project is the Rietkuil coal mining, project, in Delmas, Mpumalanga, which is valued at between R600-million and R800-million.

The project has a coal resource of about 200-million tons, of which DMC aims to mine 2.5-million tons to 3-million tons of run-of-mine coal a year, with yields of between 70% and 95%, depending on the coal grades required. The mine is expected to have a life span in excess 20 years.

Van Niekerk says DMC aims to have the project’s first boxcut opened during the first quarter of 2016. He notes that the mine’s processing plant will take an additional eight months to establish, but that the company has been in discussions with neighbouring mines to use their process plants in the interim.

Other DMC assets include mining concessions in the Springbok Flats, in Limpopo, but Van Niekerk says extracting coal from this area is technically challenging, owing to possible uranium contamination in the area’s coal seams. However, the company has been negotiating with Russian gas company Gazprom since May to transfer technology to DMC to undertake underground coal gasification trials.

Van Niekerk states that a memorandum of understanding between the companies for the use of the technology is scheduled to be signed by the end of this month.

He highlights that the plan is to trial Gazprom’s technology at Springbok Flats to establish whether the area’s coal can be converted into a clean, environment-friendly gas for power generation.

“We expect that the testing and trialling . . . will take about two years before a prefeasibility study can be drafted. The cost of this testwork at the sites is envisaged at between $10-million and $15-million.”

This project also has the potential to create greater levels of cooperation between Russia and South Africa in terms of sharing intellectual property, and technology transfer, Van Niekerk concludes.